I'm in the middle of replacing my suspension bushings. The rears are out and I'm waiting on the replacements. (By the way, not to speak for Greg but at this time he is out of the Superpros but has something akin to the Metalastiks available.)

Anyway, while I'm sure the bushings were indeed worn, they didn't look that bad, and that has me a little concerned: I was getting a bit of oversteer in fast sweepers that I'm now afraid won't be cured by the bushing replacment.

So, is oversteer just a characteristic of the Jensen Healey experience?

This book holds a lot of information on how suspensions work, and is a good read. It does not offer any silver bullets, but rather let's you start to figure out what is going on and gives pointers to what to change and why.

What? I thought the whole idea of a sports-car was for it to always have wildly uncontrollable oversteer???? or is that just indicative of 911s? hmmmm

A dead rear shock (my third set of Spax) and too much rear bar were the cause of my regular off-course excursions at Roebling a few years ago. The standard open diff makes recovery pretty much impossible at speed. Of course, recovery became extremely easy when I slapped on a set of 8.5" slicks!

For a street car tires will make the biggest difference, the problem is availability. At $54 The Sumitomo is great, but the compound is just too hard for driving at the limit. I really wish BFG, Kumho, et. al. still made their DOT approved quasi-racing tire in our size...

Wait a Minute..... I thought you were working on your next Jensen Healey upgrade to handle over/understeer resulting from drivers not being able to handle the all the excess power from one of your rebuilt engines. It's ESP ( electronic stabilty control) in a Jensen Healey. I think it would only take a few hundred hours for you to retrofit a BMW system... ;) ;) ;)

Hi Judson, the Toyo R888 is still available at a few places. Get some before the're gone! It's a DOT approved track day tire UTOG 100.

I was shocked to see the Sumitomo was the only 205/60 at the Tire Rack. The West Coast Nationals will be in Carson City NV this fall and I dont want to drive over the Sierra with these summer only tires.

This issue may force me to move to 15" wheels. Of course they will stop making 15" tires if I do that!

Kurt

Edit: I found some 205/60-13 all season Cooper Gt's at summitracing.com.

I must say the Dynamic Stability Control in my Z3 Coupe has probably saved me more than once, that's what I call a functional upgrade!

The SuperPro bushings (all part numbers in stock at this time) won't solve your problems but will certainly help and point you in the right direction. These combined with a quality set of shocks and tires will transform the car from the stock set up. As Judson mentions, just switching from a stock 5.5 inch wide tire to say a 6 inch width with something like a Minilite wheel will provide another level of improvement.

I've just about finished up my field testing of the dead-stock Jensen Healey suspension & shocks on 13242 (I think they call it "dead" because that's what happens to you when you don't upgrade). I'm astonished that anyone could actually drive a car like this at any kind of speed! It's most frightening!

The J-H's rear suspension link geometry is set up to give roll understeer, yet the car will oversteer. That means there's something else that causes this problem.

The biggest single cause of the J-H's oversteer: excessive rear roll stiffness. This comes mainly from the stock rubber bushings binding. What happens: as the body rolls in a turn, the bushing's rubber does not slide, it twists. The further it twists, the more resistance, just like any type of spring. The more resistance, the more likely the inside rear tire will come off the ground and voila: oversteer. A rear sway bar will make this worse, as will anything else that keeps the rear axle from 'articulating' under the car. Stickier tires can help with this but are not the true answer.

Urethane bushings are another partial answer, but to be effective the bushings for the top of the axle must be replaced as well. For a long time, they weren't available in urethane, I believe they now are. When installing the urethanes, grease the dickens out of them but do not use chassis grease; use either Energy Suspension's sticky urethane grease or dielectric silicone grease. Be sure to lube the flat faces as well as the steel tubes. This is very important; urethane is a 'sticky' plastic and will bind if not lubed, thus bringing back the oversteer issue.

Urethanes still have one problem: as the control arms move, the sleeve needs to move in two directions at the same time. Urethane is hard enough that it still adds a good bit of resistance to this two way motion. For 95% of street driving, this will not be an issue. The rear will be more predictable up to the very limit but will still come around when seriously provoked.

For the great majority of driving (99%) a combination of urethane bushings and stickier tires will be more than sufficient. That last 1% would mean spherical bearings or rod ends instead of the rubber and that is a difficult and pricey thing, I would put it at 4 cases on Greg's 'vino' scale.

EDIT: If you are looking for a reasonably priced truly sticky street tire, you could do a lot worse than the Falken Azenis RT615. They have a 200 treadwear rating, unfortunately the smallest size is a 195/60-14 and that one probably will be gone in a few years as sales drop. Currently that one sells for ~$70 each. If someone is planning to go to 15's anyway, they have a 205/50-15 that should fit under the fenders well (always assuming correct wheel backspacing, etc). That size usually goes for ~$95. It is not the worlds' greatest rain tire, though.

A word of advice if you haven't installed this kind of bushing before:

Installing the Superpros with a vice, I found that what looked really easy in the instruction video turned out to be really difficult the first time.

Make sure you lube well, then use the stem of a large screw driver to help get the first end of the bushings into the hole. Apply some (quite a lot actually) of pressure to the side of the bushing that wants to pop out by using the screw driver as a crow bar. Just in case I didn't express this in an understandable way: The screw driver does not go through the hole you are trying to get the bushing into, and don't use the tip of the screw driver anywhere near the bushing.

Took me 45 minutes and a lot of sweat to get the first one in, then the next five took 2 minutes each...

They are in and actually I did use the vice method -- I think you may have mentioned it in another thread. Worked like a charm. As you said, correct positioning and a little side force on the protruding bits as needed helps immensley. Very satisfying when it goes 'pop' as it comes out the other side.

The inner, lower front bushings were like that, simplest ever to install. Wonder why they didn't make the rear ones like that? Could be a matter of production costs, coming to think of it. Cheaper to handle half the number of items.

As an update, the SuperPros are in, and most of the oversteer is gone. Despite my fears that the old bushings weren't really the root cause, this project was a huge success.

I replaced the original Girling shocks with the KYB Gas-Adjust (KG5552, not sourced from Delta) and these I'm not as crazy about. They're not terrible, and most of the time they are fine, but on sharp bumps they introduce a bit of an extra kick. Maybe I'm getting old, but I don't care for it. (And yes, I only tightened the suspension bolts when the weight was back on the suspension.)

So, I'm going to go back to a twin-tube, low-pressure design and see if I like that better.